Part of the, Black Sun Ponyverse.
Two weeks has passed since the conflict started and Equestria found itself surrounded on all sides by former allies turn enemies.
A train carrying Nightwatch and Royal Guard troops back from the Northern Front is scheduled to stop in Ponyville, where the soldiers have almost a full day at their disposal to enjoy some R&R, before they are shipped out to the Eastern Front.
And they all plan to take advantage of every last minute of it.
Special thanks to Crystal Secret for proofreading and editing the story.
Contest entry for School for New Writers (SFNW), June Contest.
Two more chapters, including a rewritten ending will be released on the 1st of July.
Chapters (7)
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw1368_3W7p5.png
Congratulations! I hope this goes viral!
2692981 thank you
AHH frickin piny she is just so creepy...
In the third paragraph, did you mean to imply that the pegasus was from the Middle Ages as it implies right now, or did you mean to put 'a middle aged pegasus'
Aside from that, it looks like it's going to get funny. And I love funny.
2706887
added the "D"
Ok, you requested a critique a few days ago, but that thread seems to have died. I'll post it here. Feel free to delete my posts when you don't need them anymore. Or save a copy of them somewhere and delete this copy if you don't want my critique here in the comments section. Whatever you do I won't feel offended. So, here's what I'm going to do. I'll start by reading through your story, and picking out any little inconsistencies or errors as I spot them, tell you what works and what doesn't, that kind of minor stuff. And I'll try to give you a run through of what I was thinking and feeling as I read.
Then I'll give you a final thoughts, and dredge up any larger problem that I think you should know about. I try to be kind and fair, but if there are problems you need to know about, I won't be pulling my punches.
Allons-y!
You didn't open on weather
Bonus points!
This sentence fragment does not make sense to me. I think "...as his mane..." is probably an artifact, and should be removed. Unless I'm just not following your logic, which is also a problem, if I didn't get it, it's likely that other readers aren't getting this as well. So, if this is how you want this sentence to read, I suggest changing it into something that is more user-friendly... but it's probably just an artifact, which means you need to be doing a bit more proofreading and editing before you publish.
Proofreaders aren't too hard to find, and the will do you a world of good. I have many of them, and I appreciate them all. As for self editing, I suggest that after you write something, you sleep on it for two days to let the excitement die down, and then read it very slowly, out loud. You would be amazed how many things you can catch by reading out loud. Moving on.
Using bad grammar because it is part of how a character talks is fine. But, I don't know Corporal Helm well enough to know that he would speak this way. I'm hoping you already know this, but the correct way of saying this is he and I. If you are doing this as part of Helm's voice, then this is fine, just keep his grammar missteps consistent. If you did this because you didn't know, or because this is how you speak, then you should probably change it, and make a not of this and try not to do it in the future.
I'm left pretty confused by this, they took her how, captured her? took her down? I'm not sure what you mean by this, and would like a bit more. Now, if you want this to be confusing, or if this is referencing some other story that I haven't read, this is less of a problem. I'm just pointing out that this sentence confused me, and broke me out of the experience.
drained a little bit each day? or are you missing some words here? This sentence also confused me. I'm starting to think this is either a Noodle Incident, or there is a story I'm missing.
going through? If these are all typos/mistakes, then this could be the game breaker. Now, as far as game breakers to, this is a very easy one to fix. Read your stuff out loud, and tweak it accordingly before you post it. I'll power through, but I will say this: I was quite enjoying this story before these started popping out at me, and now I am slogging through it , only because I told you I would critique it. All these little errors destroy the enjoyment of reading.
, Ahhhhhhhhhh, Snowblush is a city, or the location of a battle That makes sense now. Maybe you could clarify that somehow earlier when you first mention it. Confusion it usually a bad thing, and everything you can do to cut it out is appreciated by your readers.
Pffft You got me to laugh, more bonus points.
This sentence confuses me again. There seem to be some words in there that don't need to be there, and some words that aren't there, that need to be there. From now on, I'll just tag these sentences as confusing because I think you get what I'm going for.
End of chapter one. First impression, there is a good fic buried in here somewhere, but your little mistakes are dragging you down. Either kick up your own editing process a few notches, or find a proofreader. Your errors seem to be mostly minor ones, just the occasional odd sentence. I wasn't really paying attention to punctuation, but nothing grabbed my attention, not that I'm the best with punctuation myself; commas still give me a heck of a time. I didn't notice any show vs. tell mistakes, but I would need to go back through and specifically look for them, and this is just a general critique, still, I'm going to guess that you are probably pretty good on that front. Dialogue is fine, world building is fine, general writing style is fine. Now, even if you cleaned this up, I don't think it will get wildly popular, your story deals too much with OCs for that, sorry, that's just how things go. In my experience, the stories that do best on this cite follow a pretty specific format.
Basically, get an editor, and make some minor revisions. I'll keep reading and comment dumping as I go, but this story is looking pretty good from here.
2726458 thanks for not quitting mid chapter.
I have corrected most of the things you pointed out, and I await your opinions on chapter two.
Take two,
Ok, we are getting to the point where I can no longer dismiss these kinds of mistakes as typos and artifacts. I'm sorry, I hate to say it, but you have bad grammar
But Don't Despair! This is not the end of your aspirations for writing. You just need to learn. I will warn you, there is quite a bit to learn, but I am willing to give you your first lesson.
Tense agreement! Important stuff, tense agreement. Wearing is past tense, reduces is present tense, don't do that. Keen your tenses consistent. In this case I would suggest: "Even with the reduced amount of armor they were wearing..."
See, not that hard. One thing that is going to go a long way towards helping you, is to write in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, instead of here directly on fimfic. I'm only guessing, but I bet you are just writing here on fimfic. Probably not a great idea. MS word--what I suggest you begin to use--has a pretty good grammar check system (slightly better than Google Docs). I went ahead and checked it out by copy/pasting this sentence into MS word, and MS word did sense that something was up. Wasn't quite smart enough to tell me how to fix it, but it did mark it. If you start writing in MS word, it will at least be able to tell you where little mistakes like this are, and even if it can't tell you how to fix them, just knowing where they are is a big step.
Ideally, you should write the first draft in Word, do a round of self editing there, copy/paste the chapters into Google Docs so that you can publish them to the internet in order to share them with your proofreaders (Google Docs is wonderful for proofreading). Then, make the second round of edits based on the feed-back you get from your proofreaders, and then import into fimfic from your Google Doc. This is my suggestion as a person who is familiar with all three programs. Okay, moving on.
Okay, this one is pretty bad, so I'ma break it down for you. Your version:
Correct(or at least more correct) version:
"Hiya," said a pink pony with a puffy, almost cotton-candy-like, fully-pink mane, who had appeared out of nowhere in front of Silky. The startled guard jumped and fell onto his rear.
First the big change, I broke your sentence into two different sentences, why, you ask? Your sentence has two nouns (Pinky and Silky) and when you switch from talking exclusively about one, to exclusively about the other, it's confusing. Let me explain a bit better, "the pony" could be talking about Pinky as much as it could be talking about Silky, and we don't get any proof that it is talking about Silky for another few words when you say him instead of her.
Second, comma use. When you are using multiple adjectives/adverbs to describe a single noun/action, you need to split off each descriptor with a comma. If memory serves me, this is called a serial coma (If I'm wrong, I don't really care and I'm far too lazy to look it up) and you should be using it.
Third, compound words. Whenever you are using two or more adjectives together to describe one feature, you need to use a hyphen to show that those adjectives are working together. Hence, fully-pink, and cotton-candy-like.
The other changes I made were to facilitate making it two sentences.
I'm going to stop critiquing here. Partly because I don't think I'm going to find any new kinds of errors, and partly because I'm starting to feel bad picking on your story so much. Basically, you are making a lot of little systemic errors because you don't have a firm grasp on the rules of punctuation and grammar. There are a lot of great guides and websites out there dedicated to teaching new writers the rules of the road, and I suggest you look a few of them up, and start studying. As far as I can tell, this isn't a bad story. It's just that, for people who do know all these little rules, it becomes very frustrating and aggravating to read stories who don't follow them. The rules are there for your and your readers benefit. They make reading your story easier and less confusing, and you really should be following them.
If you do decide to delve into the realm of grammar in order to make your writing better, and if you are having a hard time finding these guides and websites, or if you just want a friendly face, shoot me a PM. Beyond that, good luck out there. I wish you all the success in the world
>EQD Rejects / Please Review, I want another chance!
One review, coming right up. Courtesy of /fic/
Also, as a pre-review thought, I dislike the really short chapters. I personally try to make mine fall in the 2-7k words range, myself.
Line-by-line comments
I... I don't even...
2768427 ok i saw that there are many easily corrected mistakes and I, and my proofreaders, will take another look at the story.
thank you
2769969
What I've mentioned is really just the tip of the iceberg. What you really need to work on is your characterization, though a few of my comments should help with that.
MOAR!!!
2876763 well this is kind of embarrassing but i forgot to change the tag from incomplete to complete
sorry
This has something good going so far, but when I say this, I mean it in the least-harshest way possible.
You need an editor badly.